Tag Archives: Definitely Dreaming

When Janet Broughton from Definitely Dreaming first suggested the idea of a Lensbaby Circle Blog I thought “that sounds like fun”. I decided to give it a go and this is the first post in this series.

I had no idea what I was going to write about in my first post and slowly some ideas started to come together but life got in the way meaning I couldn’t carry them out. Just as I was struggling to think of something, life took another unexpected turn and one of the events preventing me executing my original ideas suddenly turned into a positive.

We now have an English Springer Spaniel puppy, called Tyke. So meet Tyke …

He is eight weeks old, sleeps, eats and terrorises our other dogs Jack (2 year old German Shepherd) and Splat (4 year old English Springer Spaniel).

He makes great subject for Lensbaby lenses and to get good photos I had to work with smaller apertures than normal and get out my flash gun. The photo above was taken with the Sweet 80. I need much more practice at positioning the sweet spot to capture him on the move.

I swapped to the Edge 50 and captured the following shots, where Splat has had enough and makes his escape leaving Tyke with the sofa to himself.

Having claimed the sofa he then decided it was time to fall asleep. I swapped to the Soft Focus optic and had a play while he slept in my lap.

This optic seems to capture to gentleness of his sleep perfectly. It wasn’t long before he was up and on the go again. This time playing with Jack…

and attacking my old shoes…

These were taken with the Velvet 56 lens at f5.6. This was different for me as I normally shoot with this lens at f1.6 – f2.8, but I love the way they have captured his playfulness.

It wasn’t long before it was time for another nap…

I usually shoot flowers so it was a challenge to capture a moving target. I remembered some of the basics of using a flashgun and was amazed that these worked so well. I had fun and so did Tyke. Hopefully he’ll learn to love the camera.

To see the other blogs in the circle and more great Lensbaby photos please follow the links til you get back to where you started. To see Ute Reckhorn’s Lensbaby circle blog click here.

I signed up for the Definitely Dreaming 52 project. The prompt for the first week was “Beginning”. I thought that would be quite easy as the first thing that came to mind was sunrise (the beginning of the day) and I see lots of amazing sunrises. It turned out it wasn’t that simple as the weather was wet and grey, doesn’t really go with the beautiful red sunrises I had in mind. My second thought was a flower bud, but it’s too early in the year for those.

I was a bit stumped. I came up with the idea about new year’s resolutions and goals and put together a still life based on this. On Saturday I felt like I was running out of time so put my idea together and got the camera out. I settled on using my Lensbaby Sweet 80 and got to work. Having played with different apertures I settled on the shot below, turned it black and white, added some texture effects and posted it.

Beginning new challenges

Sunday morning was a bright, very cold, sunny morning. I took the dogs out on the Malvern Hills. On the way home I thought I’d check out a spot I’ve seen snowdrops growing before. When we got there I was surprised to see some in bloom. Out came the camera and the Velvet 85 lens. I got several good shots but I wasn’t happy that they showed the structure of the petals so turned them black and white. The best one is shown below.

This could have been my 52 projec5 first photo. It’s a subject I’m more comfortable with but it was better for me to extend beyond my comfort zone and try something different. I submitted the Snowdrops shot to the #WexMondays competition.

We went walking on the Old Hills again at the weekend&period; It was still dull grey autumn weather but I did find some colour&period; Seonaid Teal December 6&comma; 2018 No Comments Lensbaby Old Hills Colour Velvet 56

The Old Hills is an area of common land between Malvern and the River Severn&period; The weather and light weren’t great at the weekend as it was a typical dull November day&period; The visibility was poor but we could make out the outline of the Malvern Hills to the West and other key landmarks such as Worcest&period;&period;&period;